Lost in the rain
by Never the End127
Summary: She fell in love with a monster.
1. Hurt anyone but you

"I hate you." Skye snarls. She doesn't think she's said that to anyone in years—at least, not said it and meant it. But she says it to Ward, now, shoves his hands off of hers, staggers backwards until the backs of her knees hit the raised platform in the center of the room that serves as her bed. She feels herself fall back onto it, instinctively scrambling back in an attempt to get away from him. She continues to glare, and he continues to fix her with this blank, emotionless look that makes her wish she could hurt him.

They're alone in her cell, the one they threw her into days ago after the rest of Coulson's team was captured. She was given this baggy, flimsy paper dress to wear, like the kind that was given to her at the hospital. The hospital. Where she stayed after she was shot. He had _known_. The whole time, he had known that the Clairvoyant had intended to shoot her. He had done nothing to stop it.

As far as she's concerned, Ward might as well have shot her himself.

Once again, Skye feels a rush of fury that makes her eyes burn with tears, and she doesn't want to cry again. Not in front of him.

"Skye." Ward says, calm, stern, and she wishes that she'd shot him on sight the second he and Garrett snuck back aboard the bus. She should have woken Coulson the second she laid eyes on him. She should have put a bullet in his shoulder. But he had been so convincing, so gentle, moving towards her to carefully push her gun down and take it out of her hands.

After that, the rest of Hydra had taken over the Bus and captured them all. She didn't know where the rest of the team was. She didn't know what was going to happen to her. What she did know was that she wanted to cause former SHIELD-agent, Grant Ward, as much pain as humanely possible in the next twenty minutes of visiting time he had.

"No one is going to hurt you." He tells her, his expression still impassive.

She climbs off the bed, staggering towards one of the glossy white walls that line her cell. Her nails scrabble at the plastic as she tries to get her balance—whatever they drugged her with is making her dizzy and confused. She really hopes she doesn't pass out. That would be really inconvenient at the moment.

"Skye," He coaxes, walking around the cot. He's dressed in his usual SHIELD garb—a black t-shirt and jeans and his old army tag around his neck, his hand casually gripping the gun attached to his belt.

"Stay away." She pleads, trying to back away further into the corner.

"No one is going to hurt you." Grant repeats, holding out a hand as if this is supposed to comfort her.

"I trusted you!" She spits out, disgusted. Her vision is blurry, both with anger and the haze of drugs that cloud her mind. "You played us all, right from the very first second—battleship, training, saving me from Quinn, visiting me in the hospital—it was all lies!"

Ward gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, his jaw clenching.

"You didn't save Jemma because she was your friend! You didn't save Coulson because you wanted to! You let them _shoot _me."

"Skye, listen to me. I know you're upset, alright? But if you don't cooperate, Garrett is going to take over interrogations." He gives her a meaningful look, and Skye feels her heart drop in fear. "Do you understand what that means?"

Skye jerks her head no in denial, in an obvious rejection of what he was insinuating.

"Now, I can't do a lot to help you." He tries to reason with her. "But I can guarantee your safety. All you have to do is tell me the password, Skye."

"Go to hell." She grits out.

He looks up at the ceiling, seeming almost exasperated, almost bored. And that doesn't make sense—that's not the kind of reaction _her_ Grant Ward would have. But he's not Grant Ward, and he's not hers anymore.

"Fine." The former SHIELD agent thrust his hands into his pockets and sat down on top of her lumpy little cot which was nailed to the floor in the center of the room. "You want to talk? Get out whatever you need to say. We've got time. I'll let you talk, and then you can tell me—"

"You bastard!" Skye doesn't hesitate, and he looks almost amused at her instant reaction.

She ignores him, and continues, letting her fury and betrayal and rage take over all else. "Liar! How _could_ you? I trusted you! For God's sake, I i_dolized_ you. You were my friend." She felt tears spilling down her cheeks now, staining the front of her paper nightgown and splattering over her collarbone. She's sure she looks crazy, hair messy from the days she's spent imprisoned here, eyes red and cheeks ruddy with tearstains. "What did we ever do to you? We would have died for you, any one of us! The jokes, the games, the pranks, all of it—none of it was real?"

She jams the heels of her hands against her eyes to stop the flood of tears, but this does nothing but smear the old remaining clumps of mascara over her face in a greasy, flaky mess.

Ward says nothing, only studies his gun carefully and she doesn't care enough to be afraid anymore. At least not of dying.

"How—just—you let them hurt me!" She cries out in one last, exhausted effort to make him feel some remorse. To make him understand the enormity of the evil he has committed. "You let him shoot me, and the whole time I thought you were angry, thought you cared and you wanted to make me safe—"

"I do want you to be safe." Ward murmurs almost inaudibly, but Skye doesn't care enough to let him elaborate. She continues to yell until her throat feels raw, hurling abuse, calling him a liar, a traitor, a murderer. Telling him how disgusted and horrified she was that he could do something like that—that he could kill innocent people and feel nothing. She thinks he eventually stops listening to what she's saying. She knows she does.

It feels like he's died. Skye needs to grieve for the Agent Grant Ward that she knew. The one who had never existed.

"That's enough." Ward says at last, but there's an edge of strain and exhaustion cutting into his tone that makes her want to keep going. He stands to pull her out of her corner, and she reacts the only way she knows how to in this situation. She swings her fist as hard as she can and hopes that the blow is going to cause him a lot of pain.

From the sound of it, it doesn't. A light cuff over his ear and another swing aimed at his nose both fail miserably, and it doesn't take long for him to overpower her.

"Stop." Ward catches her wrist and holds her still, pins her back against the cool, blank sheet of plastic covering the wall. "Skye. Stop this."

Though he struggles to calm her down, Ward only succeeds in making her want to hit him harder. She wants to make him bleed the way she did when Ian Quinn shot her. She wants to shatter that perfect jawline with her own tiny, broken fists and make him _hurt_ for what he's done to her.

"Skye, I'm going to get you out of this." He promises solemnly.

"Why should I trust you?" She yells.

She sees him tense, then, calm down the way he does before he strikes. Then his voice lowers and she feels his heartbeat batter against hers as he presses her further into the wall. "Trust that I won't let anything hurt you." He hisses in her ear. "I know I'm a terrible person, Skye. I'm not going to try to deny it. I have shot and stabbed and killed more people than I can count, and I'm not sorry. I don't regret it. I don't have that capacity to be able to feel remorse for what I've done." His hand smoothed her hair, and she let out this hurt, whimpering little noise that didn't even sound like herself.

"I've hurt and I've lied and I've killed. I'd do it again, without any real reason at all. But never to you, Skye. Anyone else, but not you." He breathes her name with almost reverence, and Skye feels like she might be sick. "Of all the people in the world, there are only a few I'd be willing to spare. Trust me when I say that I'm going to protect you."

"You're a monster." She says in a broken whisper, glaring up at him through tears she refuses to hide any longer. "I hate you."

There's a pause, a brief moment of hesitation. She feels his breath ruffling her hair as he leans down to look her in the eye. "I know." He says, barely moving his lips. Once again, there's that edge of pain to his voice. He moves closer, and she's prepared to hit him again until she feels his lips press against her temple, where her hair sticks to her skin from all the tears shed. His mouth his warm and chapped and rough, and a horrible, sickening part of her wants so badly to enjoy this moment. Her body is singing for his touch, and she hates herself for thinking like this.

Skye wishes she'd never met him, wishes that she could shake his scent away from her skin and her hair, blink away the sight of his beautiful eyes and forget everything about him.

The anger and betrayal consume her, riddling her with guilt. She wants to tear parts of herself away from who she is, mostly the parts that love him.

He releases her, finally, and she wishes he was dead. Wishes this had never happened. Wishes she weren't still in love with this monster who pretended to be her friend.

"I am going to kill you, Ward. You know that." Her voice is deadly, so serious that it sends shivers up her own spine.

Ward stares her down for a moment longer. Then he turns away and swipes his fingerprint across the scanner, and the door swings open heavily.

"_Hate_ you." She snarls to his retreating back, but she's only met with the creaking swing of hinges and the thump of the door.

The lock clicks, and she's alone again.

* * *

**A/N—fear not, loyal readers! The story is far from over! I'm loving this plot twist of Ward being evil, although it is breaking my heart. Next chapter, I hope to delve deeper into what Ward is thinking. Thanks for reading! (By the way, thanks to IndependentOwl for telling me about that little typo. For some reason, I used to think Fitz was Fisk. lol! :)****  
**


	2. The only home I have

**Happy Easter, from me!**

* * *

Grant Ward strode calmly and silently down the hallway of what used to be a top-security facility of SHIELD. The bunker was long abandoned by now, and there were long cracks in the concrete ceiling and everything smelled musky and old. The water that ran through the ancient pipes was metallic and stale, but still, he brought it to her every day.

He wasn't supposed to, he knew. Orders were that when she received water it was from a doctor or a specialist, giving her ice chips from a plastic spoon. Sometimes, on the days when she was being less cooperative, she got it through an eyedropper.

Garrett's reasoning behind it was that the more dehydrated she was, the more likely she was to drink the tainted serum they gave her every morning, the sticky-sweet white stuff that was supposed to keep her drugged and docile.

In his lifetime, Ward has pulled the trigger more casually than some people read the daily newspaper. And somehow, he finds this cruel.

He doesn't understand his own reasoning, for once.

He remembers how she had looked when he came in—her hair pulled back in a soft, tangled mass, her limbs crumpled and tangled amid the paper sheets of her cot—she had looked like a broken, beautiful bird.

"Skye…" he had barely dared to whisper, closing the door behind him with a heavy swing and nearing the edge of her cot.

She's awake. He can see that her eyes are red, but she's too dehydrated to spare the tears, so she's not crying. She stares blankly at the opposite wall, not addressing him, not moving.

He leans down to brush long, choppy layers of curls away from her face, and she tries to pull away off the bed, to retreat to the corner she usually does when someone comes in to visit. They take her out every morning, to brush her teeth and shower and use the bathroom, but they always drug her first. So when she sees the cup in his hands, she panics.

"Shhhh…" He sooths as she starts to struggle.

"Get away from me." She hisses, pulling herself up to the front of the cot.

"Skye—"

"I said, get away." Her voice is surprisingly calm as she climbs to her feet, swaying dangerously before staggering back into the wall.

Ward sighs, resignedly placing the glass on the cool linoleum floor. "Hide the cup under the bed, and I'll grab it later." He assures her.

She flinches when he rises to his feet and doesn't look at him until the door has swung shut again, leaving the thick, solid steel wall between them.

It's like this almost every day—her, too afraid and betrayed and angry to even look him in the eye, him, restricted both by orders and by his own sense of pride to do anything about it.

His internal conflict is interrupted suddenly as door opens at the end of the hall.

"Agent Ward."

A soft, lilting voice that makes his skin crawl echoes from around the corner, and Ward turns his head. As the door swings closed behind her, he gets a sight of a young woman a satin dress patterned with apple blossoms.

"Raina." Ward dips his head.

The first thing he notices as she nears closer is that she's wearing this awful smirk that had always been off-putting and suspicious. The next thing he sees, as she lifts her hands to run them through her short hair, is that she has dried blood crusting under her fingernails. "Garrett's in the middle of an interrogation." She explains loftily. "Thought you might want to join us—just upstairs. I had to take a break—I was getting blood all over my dress."

At these words, Ward feels his heart clench painfully in fear. Skye. For a moment, he's too petrified to even search for smears of red on the otherwise spotless satin of her dress, too furious to do anything but stand there, frozen in place.

He doesn't remember asking who it was being interrogated, but then Raina is smirking again and answering, "Ask Garrett."

He runs. Knocking aside the paper dolls of soldiers in his haste to get to the elevator, Ward isn't sure what he thinks it going to happen. But he needs to know she's safe. If she's not…

There's nothing he can do for her. She has to understand that by now. He cares for the girl, of course. She's good and she's kind and carefree, and there are parts of him that still want to be like her. But he knows he never will.

He owes Garrett too much. If it comes down to a choice between the two of them, she had to understand his decision—there was no way he could ever value her life over his loyalty to Hydra.

Every day since he left, he wonders. If she hadn't been so pretty, so charming and witty and warm, would he have ever looked twice at her? And the answer is invariably, disturbingly constant. Yes.

That's what scares him. Any other attraction he's ever felt towards a woman had been shallow and temporary, easily uprooted after a few weeks later. But Skye's beauty wasn't the thing that kept him holding onto her. He wanted her, and that want was dangerous.

Garrett had promised him that no one was going to kill her. When he had first been assured this, Ward had scoffed like he didn't care.

Now, stumbling into transmissions and looking around for Garrett, Ward hopes to god that Garrett had meant it.

"She's fine, kid." John Garrett laughs at him when he finally reaches his former SO, because he knows from the look on his face what Ward is going to ask.

He's standing near the banister overlooking the technicians, all the computer geeks and scientist that were undercover for Hydra scrambling like ants far beneath them. He's gripping a chipped mug full of coffee. He raises it to his lips when Ward finally starts to calm down, feeling the color rush back into his face.

"Yeah, torturing her isn't in the plans, kiddo. You're little friend is safe for now." Garrett takes a suspiciously long swig from his mug that makes Ward wonder if it's shot with rum. "She's not cooperating, and for the moment, Grant, that's okay. She's not a problem."

Relief washes over him like warm water after a brutal training routine. It's like having an anvil lifted off his back, although he realizes that's an overused simile.

"And if she is," John Garrett's voice cuts back through his consciousness, "I'll let you take care of it."

He's never hated anything about his SO before—he saw Garrett as someone to be respected and admired, but right now he's terrified of him. The glint in his eyes is telling him something he doesn't want to hear, and Grant wants to shut out the rest of the world.

He smirks down at Ward and lifts the mug to his lips again. "If it comes to an interrogation… well… that'll be another opportunity for you to prove your loyalty to Hydra, won't it. I'll let you question the girl. You'll get to torture her."

* * *

**A/N—I believe it's worth noting that I'm half asleep right now, and I apologize if this chapter isn't fantastic—but I'm going away for spring break to see some family, and I don't know if I'll have time to upload. For those who could not follow my plot line, here's the story—so, ward's walking down the hall, and sees Raina, who's come back from an 'interrogation.' Mistakenly believing that the girl they're torturing is Skye, Ward runs to Garrett to confirm this. Fortunately, it's not her—it's someone else. But Garrett lets him know that if Skye does need some 'persuasion' to loosen her tongue, Grant Ward will be the one to interrogate her.**

**Thanks for reading, you wonderful people, and thanks for all your reviews! I'll post soon.**


	3. Please don't say you love me

**A/N—Wow, I'm going through withdrawl. I must see 1x19. PS: this got done a lot sooner than I thought it would. Once again, must be the withdrawl. Anyone else dying for tomorrow?**

* * *

As the drugs pull her back down into a heavy sleep, Skye dreams of her childhood.

She dreams of that dusty flowered rug that Sister Margareta refused to throw out, even though fifty years of orphaned children's feet had nearly beaten it permanently into the floor. She remembers that pole at the end of the staircase that she always managed to bang her head off of every time she came down it. The broken banister, the thin cotton blankets, the sound of the late night church choir blaring obnoxiously loud every Sunday night from downstairs that was impossible to block out with a pillow.

She remembers her friends, Gretchen and Annmarie, who she used to share everything with; from clothes to crayons to Twinkies.

Her time as an orphaned little girl had been a hazy blur of ever-changing people and families and rules that Skye had never paid much attention to.

And then there was Miles.

Even in her drugged, exhausted state, Skye had enough energy to at least cringe at the name. He had been a rebel, a loudmouth, and an orphan, just like her. She remembers him with a fond nostalgic feeling—noting only how good-looking he had been and how confident and how funny. But after she and Miles ditched her last foster home in Sarver, Ohio, things had gotten real.

She got mixed up in a lot of things thereafter with Miles, mainly things she regretted. Like the Rising Tide, for instance, which happened to be the most colossal waste of time in addition to a permanent red mark on her record.

But at the same time, she can't really hate what Miles dragged her into, because it led to her meeting _them_.

And they, the team, are literally the closest thing she's ever had to a family.

Skye awakes to the sound of a metal door scraping closed, and she's too tired to really even register that they've moved her to a different cell. It doesn't matter, she decides, trying to bury her head beneath her arms. She'll be just as uncooperative here as she was in the room a few floors above.

"Skye."

She recognizes the voice of Agent Grant Ward as it echoes around the damp walls of this cell that greatly resembles the dungeons that may have been found in fourteenth-century gallows.

"Skye, wake up."

She's not asleep, but she can't face him right now. The wall is damp and moldy and everything smells like rust and iron and blood. She can't face him without crying, even though she's been crying pretty much every day since their last conversation.

"Sweetheart. I need to talk to you." He murmurs, and she hears the metal of the bars strain as he leans against them.

Skye finds that she is incapable of even shouting insults at this point, because she knows that if she opens her mouth she'll end up crying and begging for him to save her, to get her out of this hell and go back to being her friend. She stares at the wall, silent.

And god, she can't believe he had the nerve to actually call her 'sweetheart.'

Not sure if he's just being patronizing, Skye chooses to ignore him.

"They… I have a promise that no one is going to hurt you unless I give the go-ahead." He begins, carefully. "And as long as you answer my questions, I'm not going to let anyone near you."

She's heard this warning again and again, not just from him. She's not going to give in now.

"Skye—"

"How much of it was real?" She hears herself ask, and she's cursing herself moments later. She covers her face with her hands and coughs dryly.

He hesitates, and without looking at him Skye can hear him slide down the wall and drop into the ancient wooden chair directly across from her cell. "How much of what was real, Skye?" He asks like he doesn't know, and she wishes he'd stop using her name so much. It makes them seem too familiar with each other, too close to simply be a junior agent and an SO.

Without an answer from her, Ward begins his explanation. "I'm going to be as honest with you as I can, Skye. I feel like I at least owe you that."

He gets no reaction from her verbally, but Skye eventually rolls over on her cramped, uncomfortable cot and looks at him through her lank, unkempt waves of dark hair.

"That first moment I walked into that cell, right after we captured you in New York after the incident in Mike Peterson—" He laughed, but it wasn't the laugh she was used to. "I'm not going to lie. I hated you from the moment I laid eyes on you. You just… annoyed me, in every way possible. I had planned on being on a team with Simmons and Fitz and Coulson and May… but you were the variable. I hadn't planned on you, and your thoughts and ideas threw a wrench in pretty much every scheme Garrett and I set up for the next month. Honestly, I probably would have shot you myself in that first week, if I could."

She scoffs, silently, glaring at him through her bangs.

"But then," And Ward's voice was suddenly softer. "After the first couple of weeks, when I became your SO…"

"Let me guess, you got to know me and decided to change your evil ways." Her laugh was rough and the noise scratched at her throat, but it felt good to say it.

Ward frowns, then smirks, an expression that does not suit him. It reminds Skye somewhat of the Cheshire cat. Only it was more disturbing to see Ward looking haughty and sadistic than it was to see a cat grinning.

"No, to be honest, I still hated you." He swung his hands behind his head casually and leaned back in his chair. "You were still annoying and two-dimensional. You were cute, and that was it. But I've seen a lot of beautiful women, Skye, and you're in no way the most impressive. I wasn't about to run to Garrett and beg for him to spare you."

Skye nods, gratefully accepting the truth although it was painful to endure. But then he's talking again, and the soft, husky tone in his voice makes her shiver.

"And then… I don't know. I guess I got used to waking up and seeing you first thing every morning. I got used to you scribbling down computer codes on your hands and constantly outwitting me mid-playful banter. I liked watching you work on your computer or cook those days when we don't touch down for lunch and everyone gets hungry. I liked it when you'd talk to me for ages about nearly anything, and I'd never get bored of you." He trailed off to stare at the wall.

"Bet Garrett didn't like that." Skye murmured.

"He didn't really know, to be honest. That's why he…" Ward sucked in air through his teeth.

They were both silent.

"Skye, I swear, I didn't know."

"You didn't know that Ian Quinn was going to shoot me? After your SO ordered it? Really, Ward? Really?"

He grits his teeth and balls his fist and just says nothing.

"I would never let them do that to you." He growls out finally.

"Why wouldn't you? You've let them throw me in a cell. You've let them starve me and knock me around and keep me away from the sunlight. So when did you discover that you weren't okay with them shooting me?"

"Right after I _discovered_ that I love you, Skye."

Dead silence.

Everything feels frozen and dull and numb, and Ward, who has risen from his chair, is an unmovable statue hovering irresolutely outside the bars of this cage.

"What?" Skye is amazed she can talk with all the air being sucked from her lungs like a vacuum.

"I love you." He breathed. "I need you to know that, no matter what my position in Hydra forces me to do. I care about you deeply and I want to protect you. But if it comes down between you and Garrett—Skye, you need to understand—"

"Get out!" She shouts, finally, tearing away from the sheets and the blankets and stumbling towards the bars. "Go away! I'm not going to tell you anything! SHIELD, Hydra—I don't care, I protect the people I love, and you are not one of them. You are never going to be one of them, Ward, so just get _out_!"

He doesn't flinch. He stares her down, looking almost disappointed in her, as if they're still apart of Coulson's team and she's screwed up on a particularly important mission. "I'm sorry you feel that way." He says, and he doesn't sound robotic so much as he does sarcastic. "But I have to… I have to follow—"

"Is Grant Ward even your real name?" She interrupts again.

There's another long silence before Grant—damn it, when did she start thinking of him as Grant?—steps away from the bars of her cell and picks up his rifle. "No." He admits.

She slams her palms down against the metal and curses, violently jarring the walls of the cell. "Damn it Ward, I _hate_ you."

He just gives her this look, and Skye finds herself moving away from the door as he reaches into his belt and pulls out a keycard. Her back hits the wall as he swipes the card over the scanner and the door swings open with an ear-splitting screech.

"Ward." His name is not a question, nor a statement nor exclamation. He moves closer, and she presses herself against the wall. "What are you—?"

Ward flew towards her as fast as a viper and she was dragged roughly into his arms as the metal gate clattered shut behind him.

She tried to scream, tried to beat on his chest and call for help, although she couldn't imagine who would want to help her in this situation. One of Ward's strong, ropy arms locked in an iron grasp around her waist and the other restrained her arms as she thrashed and fought and kicked.

The kiss he wrestles her into is rough and messy and so passionate it borders on violent. A furious clash of lips and teeth and tongue, and he swallows down her gasps and pleas and yells, drowning her out with the hard line of his lips.

It's not a kiss so much as an assault. His hands roam freely over her body, up her legs and under the hem of her shirt and slipping into her back pocket—

Skye went still, suddenly, despite the urgent heat of his mouth persistently demanding her attention, even with his fingers tracing nonsensical patterns into her skin.

She felt him slip the keycard into her back pocket.

The keycard that would unlock the door of her cell.

Ward squeezed her wrist meaningfully, and finally released her. Skye tumbled backwards, clutching at the concrete wall and gaping at him, stunned.

"You always were meant to be a part of SHIELD, Skye." He says, and anyone listening in on them right now may mistake his smugness as actual victory, may have taken it as a sign of him gloating. But she sees the hurt in his eyes, can practically _feel_ the ache hanging heavy in her chest—she feels it to. He's proud of her. Proud of her, and willing to help her escape.

But not willing to fight alongside her.

Skye can only force herself to nod, her jaw clenched tight and her hands curled into fists.

Ward doesn't look back, but she knows that his laughter is fake as he locks the gate of her cell again with the press of a few buttons. He picks up his gun and leaves, and she wants to call out to him. Wants to beg him to come with her, to please, please, _please_ come back to her, to be the person she knows he is way deep down. She wants him on her side.

He told her he loved her. He actually said he loved her, and that fact is still sinking in. He had risked everything he had worked for all his life to save hers, slipping her a keycard and giving her the go ahead to escape under his watch.

Skye, despite growing up as an orphan, had been a lot like other kids in the sense that she was raised on Disney movies. A lot of them contained a pretty girl who transformed the villain into a handsome prince, someone good and kind and nurturing, because they just had that much power over the other. Because love is that powerful.

But Skye's seen enough of the world to recognize a fairytale myth. It doesn't always work like that. Sometimes the villain falls in love. But that doesn't make him the good guy.

The door swings shut, and Skye's hand slips into the back pocket of her jeans.

She's getting the hell out of this prison. She's not going to let them scare her or outwit her or beat her down until she breaks and gives them everything they want.

She's going to take down Hydra, with or without Grant Ward fighting alongside her.

* * *

**A/N—Got the idea for the ending from watching the Phantom Menace, where Padme puts the key in her mouth—pretty cliché, but I don't care. Anyway, before I get any angry, ranting comments, I am a very romantic and unrealistic person who loves fairytales and thinks it's perfectly plausible that love can change someone—it doesn't always have to be romance! But how I take this story really depends on how the writers take this show. Maybe Skye will convince Ward not to go to the dark side. Maybe not. Thanks for your lovely reviews, and I will post soon! (Although probably not this soon.)**


	4. Out of the darkness, into the light

***Probably should have mentioned earlier- I don't own agents of shield and all that. This is purely for fun.**

* * *

While in her cell, Skye dreams of who she can be.

It's a force that both terrifies and exhilarates her, makes her blood burn hot with adrenaline and her mind spark with the energy she's dying to release.

There's nothing that could stop her, she knows. If she were to let herself slip away, if she gave into that potential, let herself be everything she was—she would be unstoppable.

"Not getting what you want is the only thing that makes life interesting." Coulson had once told her, a few days before her capture. "We'd all be bored out of our minds if every mission went off without a hitch."

He was wrong, though. As she gives in to the reality of her dream, she sees that.

The power that burns somewhere deep beneath her skin, something embedded in her very soul. And it's not the ability to blow up a truck with her mind. She doesn't have the power to set things on fire with a sweep of her hand or control people's minds with a blink of her eyes.

Skye can make things happen. Anything and everything she wants. It's purely chance, sometimes, and others it's completely unexplained. Like at first, when she noticed it as a child. Before she could control it.

When she wanted a doll another girl was playing with, they forgot about it or gave it to her or lost it, and it would somehow fall into her hands. When to be out of bed past curfew, no one noticed her. When she told lies, they were always believed. Somehow she always pulled out ahead in card games or board games- even battleship, as she had discovered a few months ago with Ward. She hadn't even realized what she'd been doing then- it was just a game.

Then later, even when she was struggling and broke without a friend in the world but Miles, she noticed it. She never had hit a red light in her life. The very first key on her keychain that she jammed into a lock would be the right one. When she wanted to use her phone, her battery would last three hours longer than the meter said it would.

It was strange, and bizarre, and in no way phenomenal. It was just convenient.

Things just went the way she wanted them to. It wasn't like she could control people's minds or force them to do everything she said. The universe itself seemed to bend to her will.

It had been harmless, for the first ten years of her life.

Then the force protecting her started to change who she was.

Skye remembered trying to explain it to Miles, once. They had been lying on his ratty, moth-eaten couch cushions, talking and laughing casually when she brought it up. He hadn't understood.

"You think that things always work out for you? Skye, your optimism is awe-inspiring, but look at us." He gestured to the broken computer parts and wiring sprawled out over every flat surface. "Our lives are a mess."

She had told him to forget it.

She didn't tell him that she could make things better for them if she wanted to.

For the longest time, she thought it had gone away. Until six months ago, in Russia. There was a hired gunman, one with a fourteen caliber aimed straight at her chest. Coulson and May had been too far away to hear her scream for help. And Jemma had been even further off to the side—

But it hadn't mattered. She didn't want the bullet to hit her. Skye hadn't wanted to feel the bullet ripping through her skin, tearing through her body. The gunman had been meters away from her, a few mere _meters_.

The bullet had veered off to the side and hit Simmons instead.

Something terrible always happened, but she got what she wanted. When she was on a covert op, all the guards were off duty. When someone set fire to the safe house they were in, she was the only one who went completely untouched by the flames.

It occurs to her now why she had survived the assault of Ian Quinn.

She hadn't wanted to die. She hadn't been ready. It only made sense that the team would find some impossible, supernatural thing to save her. It was what she wanted.

Skye knew that she was nothing but a piece of lost technology. People had told her that from the moment they told her who she was.

But she could _make_ Ward good. She could make him not be a traitor. It was her choice, his life a blank slate for her to color and mar and erase. She could stop people from dying, or make them collapse from a sudden sickness or heart attack—whatever suited her at the moment.

In her dream, Skye sees who she could be.

Ward loves her, in this fantasy. He loved her, but she wouldn't forgive him, and this is how she makes him pay for what he's done. In this fantasy, everyone respects and admires her potential. No one wants to hurt her. Her powers grow stronger every day, to the point where she can make Hydra cease to exist.

She could change time itself; make it _never _exist. All of history, all of the world hers to play with. All the universe, hers to arrange. She was no human—she was a goddess, she had the power to rip apart the very fabric of reality and sew back it together.

The world could be hers, and hers alone.

Skye jolts awake and nearly tumbles off the edge of her cot. She can't move, for a moment, frozen with fear. "Ward…"

It's almost embarrassing, how quickly and instinctively his name falls from her lips—even now, she still finds herself calling out his name in the dark when she wakes from her nightmares.

Even without opening her eyes, Skye knows that already, it's starting. The force that has kept her alive this long, this power inside of her is winning the constant battle raging inside her head. She knows that every hallways she stumbles through will be unguarded, every door will be unlocked. She knows that no one will be watching the security feeds now, and even if they were, they wouldn't see her. She'll find all the supplies she needs along the way, as well as weapons, her stolen laptop and a sat-phone.

When Skye does open her eyes, they immediately fix on the iron scan lock on the metal frame of the cage door.

A draft of cool air rushes through the vents, and Skye breathes in deeply as she studies the stretch of the bunker and scope beyond it. The keycard in her back pocket digs into her hip.

It's time to go.

* * *

**So, I'm thinking the last chapter for this story? Let me know what you guys thought, and thanks for sticking with this fic! Sorry if you couldn't understand her power- I know it was weird and vague. The whole idea is that Skye always gets what she wants- however, Skye as a person doesn't want to manipulate people and the forces of nature to do her bidding. She just wants to live.**

**fin. Bye!**


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